


Remember

by Thebiwife



Category: ER (TV 1994)
Genre: Bonfire Night, Canon Rewrite, F/M, Family, Guy Fawkes Night, Holidays, November 5th, very brief allusion to kkk/white supremicist imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:47:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27436078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thebiwife/pseuds/Thebiwife
Summary: Imagining if Elizabeth had invited the Greene family over for their first meeting a couple of weeks before their first meeting at Thanksgiving, allowing for her to avoid the painful mansplaining of WWII from Mark's Dad and instead talk a bit about her own region's history.
Relationships: Elizabeth Corday/Mark Greene
Kudos: 3





	Remember

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first year in a while without any celebrations for November 5th as I am locked down with no outdoor space of my own - I instead enjoyed writing this while watching V for Vendetta as a close substitute.

“Is she nice?” Rachel asked Mark as they climbed the staircase to Elizabeth's apartment.

Mark put his arm on his daughter's back, guiding her towards the correct front door. “She’s very nice. Having us over for Guy Fawkes Night, that’s nice of her, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know, celebrating blowing up Catholics in a city of almost a million ‘em doesn't seem wise to me,” Mar's Dad grunted.

“That’s not what they’re celebrating, Dad.”

“Is she pretty?” Rachel shifted the tone of her interrogation.

“Very pretty,” Mark smiled, near blushing as Elizabeth opened the door at the moment he said so. 

“Hello,” she smiled, her glistening eyes meeting his. “Thank you so much for coming,” she said to Rachel who merely shrugged, as Mark’s Dad held out a hand to shake hers. "Please come it."

They followed her into her apartment that was warm both in temperature and furnishing, autumnal tones accented across the living room and the sweet scent of burning sugar wafting across from the kitchen. 

"Something smells good," Mark smiled, kissing Elizabeth who turned her cheek to him, taking the bottle of wine he held out from him.

"That will be the parkin," Elizabeth dashed across the room to retrieve the almost, yet not- _quite-_ burnt ginger cake from the oven. "You should try a piece while it's still warm."

"This November 5th is a big deal for you, huh," David commented, looking at the series of bowls and books dotted around the kitchen, splattered with brown batters and crumbed with dark sugars.

"Well, there's a town not far from where I was born where it is a very big deal. So I guess it probably is for us Sussex folk more than most. I went every year, until I came to Chicago that was."

"Mark persevered with cutting out the warm cake slices and trying not to burn himself as he did so. "Is there not something less... _dessert like_ we should be eating first?"

"Now where's the fun in that?" Elizabeth laughed. She opened the wine and poured three glasses, offering soda to Rachel who stuck her tongue out at Mark refusing her request for wine. "This coming from the nation who put marshmallows on their sweet potatoes."

"Now children," David laughed. "I for one am interested to know more. So you celebrate _what_ exactly? I hear it's not a...religion...thing?"

"No, well, not entirely." Elizabeth searched her shelves for photo albums where she found photos of she and her mother at the Lewes bonfire a few years back. "Things are a little different in Lewes than the rest of the country, and I know not all of it will be perceived as goo taste..." she skipped quickly over the images of processions of burning crosses. "But effectively an attempt to blow up our parliament was thwarted, so we celebrate by burning a _Guy_ , literally, a Guy Fawkes made of straw, and then have our fair share of fireworks. For me it's much more the sights, the smells...the _sugar._ "

"And plenty of it from what I can tell," Mark laughed, running his finger through the sticky bonfire toffee. "So this is...food? And not some kind of industrial strength adhesive."

"You're acting like you've never had treacle before," Elizabeth laughed, running her finger through it too, before putting her finger in Mark's mouth. 

"Rachel, you don't want to try some?" Mark asked his daughter, after pushing an overly playful Elizabeth away from him, reminding her who else was in the room with them.

"What is it?" Rachel watched them, wiping of the sticky smears from their hands, pulling a face of disgust.

"Molasses, pretty much," Mark shrugged.

"And if a holiday doesn't give us any excuse to indulge," Elizabeth smiled, mischievously.

* * *

"So in England you don't have Hallowe'en?" Rachel asked Elizabeth while they sat on the fire escape, wrapped up in warm outer layers. 

"Well, it is _now._ It never used to be. We would have mischievous night, the night before Guy Fawkes night, when we go out and play tricks on the neighbours."

"Tricks? What kinda tricks?"

"Oh, like we would wrap their cars in cling wrap, or put butter on their door handles."

"That's all?"

"Oh, well you tell _me_ , Miss Greene, what would you do?"

"I don't know."

"One year, we actually left a rotting fish in a teacher's office. Only once he came back from the week's half-term holiday did he find out..."

"Ewww!"

"But these days, Hallowe'en is pretty common. Even Guy Fawkes' Night is less common than it once was, and Mischievous night doesn't really happen anymore. It's a shame we can't do the fireworks here either," Elizabeth laughed. "But I hope you've got a bit of a taste of what it's like."

"Maybe one day we can go to England with Elizabeth and see the real thing," Mark smiled, joining them on the fire escape and putting his arm around Elizabeth's waist. "You ready for sparklers?"

"Of course," Elizabeth smiled. "Now you need to try write your name before the sparkler goes out. Ready?"

"Ready," Rachel smiled, pulling her gloves taut and squinting as her dad lit the end of her sparkler. 

"I'll race you," Mark yelled. "M, A, R..."

"Hey, that's not fair," Rachel and Elizabeth shouted back in unison.

**Author's Note:**

> No smut at all, so unlike me


End file.
